Not Just a Sword but a Crossroads

I really don’t like SBC politics and the circus that surrounds a lot of the machinations of our Convention. I love attending the Annual Meeting for the missions reports, the opportunity to affirm our cooperative missions, the chance to see old friends, and yes to grab whatever swag is in the Exhibit Hall. But I’ve also felt, at least in the last few years, a greater sense of duty to be in the hall when the decisions are made to at least let me ballot be a vote reflecting my conscience and convictions as a messenger from our church. At times I’ve voted in the minority, but for the most part I’ve been honored to cast a ballot (and get the right one out of the booklet) in joining with the overwhelming consensus of our fellow messengers.

There’s much ink that’s been spilled on the last few years, and I feel a little hesitancy to add more to it. But again, as the ballot has been raised in conscience, so must some digital ink be spilled. This morning I read a very thoughtful article from a fellow SBC pastor and Louisville native, Heath Lambert from FBC Jacksonville. He’s done an incredible job there. And I have the highest regard for him as a pastor and statesman. He’s not too bad for a Male Bulldog.

In his article, he discussed the sword that could potentially tear asunder the SBC as we look ahead to Indy and the inevitable vote on a major constitutional decision, and some possible recommendations from what’s become known as the Cooperation Group. I fully agree that this is a pivotal annual meeting. What we decide in the halls of Indianapolis will have a ripple effect for decades to come. I don’t believe it’s just a sword. I believe we’re at a fundamental crossroads that will shape who we are as a convention of churches for a generation or beyond.


Here’s why: We are at a place where we are making a decision about our very identity.

For starters, an individual is not a Southern Baptist by definition, unless they are a member of what would be deemed a “cooperating church” by the SBC Constitution. So someone may be sympathetic to the work of the SBC, but their being part of the SBC depends on being part of a church that’s part of the SBC. Clear as mud? Probably. Here’s where it gets messier. The SBC Constitution defines a cooperating church along five key guidelines. And it’s the first that has raised the most discussion. A church is a cooperating church if it has a faith and practice (i.e. a statement of faith or beliefs) that “closely identifies” with the Convention’s. The Convention’s adopted statement is the BFM 2000. It’s the guiding document for our convention agencies and entities, and it’s something we ask our missionaries & church planters if they can affirm. A church is also considered a cooperating church if they fill out their ACP, give through the Cooperative Program or Great Commission Giving, do not act in a manner against our beliefs regarding sexual abuse or racial discrimination. Side note, for a Convention founded in 1845 in large part so that slaveowners could be missionaries, it’s not insignificant that we would disfellowship our founding leadership today.

But it’s the first that I want to spill some digital ink about. The Crossroads is that we are at a point where we are trying to decide what “closely identifies” means. For years it’s largely been treated as a “if you’re in the general area” and there are many subgroups and affinity arms of the SBC that have been able to coexist and cooperate together for decades. In fact I think those secondary affinities are to our benefit. We need Calvinists and non-Calvinists so that we keep each other balanced on the Gospel. We need cool hip churches and choir robes. We need pastors in sneakers and in three piece suits. We need them because they give us a picture of what we’re really about, the Kingdom of God. We’re a reflection of a diversity of settings, contexts, church names, worship style, preaching length, and more. And we’re willing to cooperate and join together because despite our differences we know we can together accomplish more than we could apart.

Where I believe we’re at a Crossroads is that we have for the last chapters of our history sought to clarify “closely identifies” with some specific sinful practices. We have staked our claim on our position on gender, marriage, and sexuality. That was the fundamental shift in the writing of the 2000 BFM, to address our witness in cultural confusion (similar to the Modernism rising in the 1925 version). We believe God’s design for marriage, gender, and sexuality is both for our good and for our flourishing. We’ve also made clear that we believe racial discrimination is outside the bounds of our faith and practice. I know resolutions are as meaningful as preseason games, but it’s not a small deal that we adopted a resolution against the flag that our forefathers fought under in the Civil War. And we’ve in recent years taken a rightful stand on sexual abuse as an abomination, and have put teeth to that in disfellowshipping churches who have not responded biblically to abuse in their churches. 

The current discussion, centered on what’s become known as the Law Amendment, is the first time that we’ve moved off what would be inherently sinful to something with which we may not agree. I know I’ll lose whatever complementarian street cred I have left by saying this, but I believe that there are egalitarians in heaven. And I believe there are good brothers and sisters who love Jesus, who are committed to the Word, and who are in agreement with us on 99% of things except this one. We have come to a different conclusion that they have. We believe the office of pastor is reserved for qualified men. However, I am not willing to elevate a different conviction on gender roles to the same level of racism and sex abuse. Our friends may be mistaken, but I do not believe they are rising to the level of wickedness that someone like a Paul Pressler or the countless unknown names who have preyed on victims in our churches have.
For the first time, we would be defining our boundaries of cooperation along a line that has not been done before. It is a watershed moment. And we cannot approach Indianapolis with the raw excitement my kids’ basketball teams approached their first game. We have to enter it knowing that we are looking at a trajectory church that will shape the next generation, and will likely result in more questions than answers.

And that’s where I want to, with great caution as a pastor and as a champion for the good work of our Convention, lower the temperature in the room and ask ourselves a few hard questions ahead of Indianapolis. When the group of former SBC presidents made the motion to request a Cooperation Group and a pocket of SBC Twitter/X started calling them liberal, I had a bad feeling what was going to come. I wasn’t surprised though, since there’s been a pocket in the SBC who’s moved further to the right on a number of social, theological, and political issues. If they’ve moved to the right, we should expect those who held where they were to be “further left” but in reality they haven’t moved. In Nashville when the additional language on an abortion resolution was presented, it was from that group who are known as “abolitionists” and they argue for due process and legal protection for unborn children. There’s no one (at least I don’t think anymore) in the SBC who wants to continue doing Marches for Life for eternity. We’d all love to see the abortion mills around us closed and the beauty of life cherished and celebrated from conception to death. As a pastor in an abortion sanctuary state, I’d love nothing more than to see the building behind the TGI Friday’s a mile from my church turned into a strip mall rather than a Planned Parenthood. But advocating for an incremental approach is not the same as championing abortion. And we have to look at each other as co-laborers. We want the same thing. We may have a different roadmap to get there. But we’re on the same team.

So with that, let’s consider:

1. Can we walk and chew gum at the same time? I don’t think we need to ignore the Law Amendment. And I think we need to vote and have it settled. But I also don’t think it’s the most pressing thing we’re facing. And I don’t think we need to ignore Law for the sake of the ARITF. We need to do both. We need to walk and chew gum at the same time. We need to respond to the crisis of institutional trust that’s been simmering for quite some time. We need the Database. We need to ensure that we’re doing everything we can so that a Paul Pressler doesn’t happen again. And to be honest, we need to reckon with our own history and our own Conservative Resurgence. But let’s not put them off against each other. We have time. We must walk and chew gum. That means we don’t need people glory-hogging microphones to ask gotcha questions or ask for pet projects. We have serious business to attend to. So if this is when you want to recommend that we have Mashed Potato Sunday on the SBC calendar, maybe save that for Dallas.
2. How close is close enough? The issue of the day is what we believe about the office of pastor and who is biblically qualified for that. But if we are going to make adherence to the Baptist Faith & Message a necessity for SBC cooperation, we have to reckon with a few things. First, the very preamble to the BFM is that it speaks more of consensus or general guidance rather than creedal affirmation. So that’s one part. But the other is that the language of the BFM200 presupposes things like regeneration preceding faith (a big thing in Reformed/Calvinistic circles). Do churches who believe you’re born again when you confess Christ as Savior now have to worry about the Credentials Committee knocking? Is the ordo salutis really worth dragging into the arena? What about churches that practice non-closed communion? The BFM’s language is very much what we’d call restricted or closed communion, that the Supper is for those who are members of the church observing. We may be addressing one issue of the SBC’s practice and life, but are we opening ourselves up to starting something with unintended consequences? I hope not. I hope we never get to that point where we’re parsing the clauses of the BFM and scouring church websites to rat on each other.
3. When’s it going to end? I don’t mean discussions of doctrinal clarity. Those need to continue. That’s why we have so many confessional statements in church history. There’s always a need for greater clarity. As I’ve led a group through You Are A Theologian at our church, I’ve found myself every week taking nuggets from the book and applying it to our cultural context and our mission. What I mean is when is the constant fighting spirit going to end? One of the inevitables of an SBC annual meeting is there’s going to be someone looking for a fight. I don’t know why. It always happens. And I’m not saying there’s never a time to engage or defend. If you’ve ever read the 1980s Peace Committee documents, you know there was a time where there were some serious questions of theology in our seminaries and agencies. But if we’re going to assume a posture of always looking under every rock for any “hidden liberals” we’re eventually going to change the definition of who the “enemy” is. The question isn’t going to become orthodoxy or heresy but a shift in Ovetron’s window. It’ll go from heresy to heterodoxy. It’ll slide from heterodoxy to heteropraxy. And it’ll finally end with heteropraxy to purging. I don’t want to go into Dallas or Orlando or Salt Lake in the next few years wondering who we’re kicking out next or what we’ll be uncovering. I want peace in the land, and not just a satiated peace but a real peace that can look at the future of our mission.
4. How much tension is enough? We really need to think about this one. If the SBC is functioning the way it should, no one should be completely satisfied. And I mean that in as good a way I possibly can. We should always look at our trustee lists and go “Oh I read that article or blog he/she wrote where they disagreed with <insert whoever your hero is>.” Or there’ll be a music presentation that’s not our jam. Yes, I think we need Southern Gospel at the SBC. It’s not my jam. But it is to many, and that’s worth celebrating and honoring. But we’ll always live with some measure of tension. The key is going to be for each of us to consider the person on the other side of whatever it is and commit ourselves to living with that tension and saying “We’re from different neighborhoods, but this is our city.” I am, have been, and likely will continue to have concerns about certain segments or groups in the SBC. But if we’re going to move forward together, we’re going to need to figure out how the CBN, Founders, Baptist Review, SBC Voices, Pillar, and all of these groups live in the tension that the SBC isn’t going to look like our affinity group, and be ok with it.
5. Are we taking our eye off the ball? While we’re at this Crossroads moment, maybe it’s worth revisiting something that came from someone I have had profound disagreement with but who nailed it. I saw a tweet from someone in the CBN camp who said they were serving that day at the headquarters of the SBC, their local church. I loved it. And I think it’s really easy to get bogged in the details of the discussions, social media posts, podcasts, articles, interviews, and conversations over text messages we have with each other to the point that we take our eyes off the ball. God hasn’t called us to “save the SBC.” In fact, if the whole thing shut down tomorrow the Kingdom of God would continue without missing a beat. God doesn’t need 901 Commerce Street in Nashville. Neither does Fairview Heights Illinois. Fairview Heights needs FBC. And as FBC’s pastor, the ball isn’t in Indy, it’s here on Lincoln Trail. It’s the neighborhood I cut through to go home that takes a couple minutes longer but I’m praying each of those streets. It’s the pot shop across the road (welcome to Illinois) that I pass by and pray for those seeking to numb their pain.That’s the ball. So while we await Indianapolis, let’s not forget God put us in a community to give them Jesus.

However you’ll vote in Indianapolis, and wherever you might be on some of these concerns, we’re going to leave Indianapolis on June 12th forever changed as a convention. Let’s pray that however it goes, we’ll walk out the convention hall together and not defined by when our ballots are raised.

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For reference:
1. Heath Lambert "The Sword Tearing the SBC Asunder" https://fbcjax.com/first-thoughts/the-sword-tearing-the-sbc-asunder-confessional-statements-the-cooperation-group-and-the-future-of-our-convention/?fbclid=IwAR2oLv5oVmgf2_Kck0-IV7-Z9JojPps1Yl1y5X9CFwkQPXFFVpYrTTiq0qE
2. BFM Preamble https://bfm.sbc.net/preamble/
3. BFM Constitution (in particular Article 3.1) https://www.sbc.net/about/what-we-do/legal-documentation/constitution/
4. Law Amendment https://sbcamendment.org/
5. 2024 SBC Annual Meeting information ​https://sbcannualmeeting.net/